Trump has a long history of racism, from the 1970s until now; he is divisive and polarizing. Racism is a core element of his campaign

By Dr. Juanita Bratcher

Editor & Publisher, CopyLine Magazine

African Americans, please don’t buy into the false premise – claims and impressions – by Donald Trump that he is concerned about you, your best interest or your welfare. He’s not. This man is a racist and demagogue. This is a man who for more than seven years questioned the legitimacy and integrity of the only and first African American president this country has ever elected.

I’ve been a journalist now for more than 40 years, and it pains me to see any African American, especially Trump’s bombastic African American surrogates, sing the praises of this Republican Party presidential nominee without calling into play any of his negative or racist actions. They try to sugar-coat everything they say about him.

However, I’m mindful that during slavery African Americans were defined in two categories “House Nigger” and “Field Nigger.”

Reportedly, the “House Nigger” was a Black that worked inside the house and did his/her best to please white people even if it meant disowning their own racial identity. And the “Field Nigger” worked in the field all day, in the hot sun, picking cotton instead of working in the big house like the “House Nigger”.

The stakes are high in the November 8th presidential election. This is serious business and no time for play or to be nonchalant about what is taking place in this country, in this election year. It is of the utmost importance that we vote in this election for the candidate that will put forth efforts in the best interest of all Americans regardless of race, color or creed.

President Barack Obama in a speech before the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation gala this weekend said, “Hope is on the ballot and fear is on the ballot too”, obviously a description of what either of the two candidates will bring, if elected.

Obama urged the black community to realize what’s at stake. “If you care about our legacy, realize everything we stand for is at stake. All the progress we’ve made is at stake in this election.”

He said Blacks should give Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the same support they gave to him. He received 93 percent of the Black vote in 2012.

“We have achieved historic turnout in 2008 and 2012, especially in the African-American community. I will consider it a personal insult and an insult to my legacy if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election,” Obama said. “You want to give me a good send-off? Go vote.”

Obama warned attendees at the gala and blacks in general to go out and vote. “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration, that’s on the ballot right now…and there is one candidate who will advance those things, and there is another candidate whose defining principle, the central theme of his candidacy is opposition to all that we’ve done. There’s no such thing as a vote that doesn’t matter, it all matters.”

According to one poll, Clinton has an 80 percent lead over Trump among Black voters.

A few days ago Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said there were more white supremacists supporting Trump than leaders of his own party.

“Let’s face it, Trump has more support from the Aryan Nation and the KKK than he does from the leaders of his own party,” Warren said.

Several mainstream Republicans have refused to endorse trump for office, and a number of African Americans that worked for the Republican National Committee quit rather than work on his campaign.

These are some of Trump’s actions that should tell you not to vote for him in the November 8th election:

1.He pushed false rumors that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. He sent investigators to Hawaii to investigate Obama’s birth certificate, and when Obama won a second term in 2012, Trump went ranting on Twitter:

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!”

“Let’s fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.”

“Our country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble…like never before.”

“This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!”

“The phoney Electoral College made a laughing stock out of our

nation. The loser one!”

“He (Obama) lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election.

We should have a revolution in this country!”

He questioned Obama attending Harvard Law School, demanding that Obama release his university transcripts, yet, Trump has not released his tax returns. He is the only presidential candidate who didn’t release tax returns.

In 1989, Trump ran an ad in local papers demanding “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police, in a case involving four black teenagers and a Latino teenager accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. In the end, the teens’ conviction was vacated and the city paid $41 million in settlement to the teens. Then Trump argued that they were probably involved in other criminal activity.

In 1991, John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, wrote in his book about Trump’s criticism of a black accountant. Reportedly, Trump said, “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”

In 1992, a $200,000 fine was brought against The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino because it transferred black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.

The Trump Management Corporation in 1973 was sued for violating the Fair Housing Act. This was during the Nixon Administration. Federal officials found evidence that Trump had refused to rent to black tenants and lied to black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. However, he signed an agreement in 1975 not to discriminate to renters of color, without admitting to discriminating before.

Village Voice, in a 1979 article, alleged that the Trumps refused to rent to black seekers, and a rental agent said Fred Trump instructed him not to rent to blacks and to encourage existing black tenants to leave.

In 1980, a former employee at Trump’s Castle said “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino the bosses would order all the black people off the floor.”

The US Department of Justice sued his company twice for racial discrimination when Trump was serving as the president of his family’s real estate company, the Trump Management Corporation. In 1973, the Justice Department sued the company for alleged racial discrimination against black people looking to rent apartments in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

Reportedly, Trump condoned the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester after Trump supporters physically attacked the protester at a November campaign rally in Alabama when the protester began to chant “Black lives matter.” In a video, the assailant (a Trump supporter) was kicking the man after he had already fallen to the ground.

African Americans must always use their voting power constructively. They must never forget the power of the ballot. In years past, some of our forefathers lost their lives in their struggle to get equal voting rights for Blacks in this country.

African Americans encountered various barriers in their efforts to get the right to vote in America – hostile law enforcement officials that were indifferent to them having the audacity to pursue their goal of being added to the registration rolls, insulting literacy tests designed to be difficult, to deny them the right to vote, and the Grandfather’s™ clause and poll taxes. Voting was mostly under state control. The U.S. Justice Department established that in many counties the tests were ‘administered unfairly.’

The late Honorable Illinois Appellate Court Justice .R. Eugene Pincham said: “Literally, since the beginning of civilization, one of the things that the powerful has consistently denied the powerless throughout the centuries has been the right and the privilege to participate in their government, i.e., the right to vote.”

A stark reminder of that was a comment made by the late Mississippi U.S. Senator Theodore G. Bilbo in 1946. In his re-election bid in 1946, Bilbo was in stark opposition to Blacks having the right to the ballot box. He said, “Niggers (his word) should not be allowed to vote in this country…Do not let a single Nigger register and vote, If you let a few register and vote this year, next year there will be twice as many, and the next thing you know the whole thing will be out-of-hand.”

There are some conservative politicians in this country now who are using all kinds of tactics to try and diminish the black vote through Voter ID laws.

We cannot and will not go back to the dark era of yesteryear when certain citizens could not vote in this country. We must fight tooth and nail, every step of the way, to extinguish efforts by some who would try to disenfranchise voters’ constitutional right to the ballot box. There should never be barriers set-up to stop people from exercising their constitutional right to vote in this country.

So, African Americans think about your actions. Do not give a thought about boycotting the polls on Election Day or voting for a third party candidate. That’s a waste of your vote. The Alt Right will continue to support Donald Trump. And making a protest vote about the candidates and voting for a third party candidate will not accomplish anything. It would be a bad decision; and it should not make the cut in any way.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who was a Democratic candidate for president in the Primary election, suggested to voters that they should not vote for a third-party candidate for president because this is not a time for a protest vote. The effort should be focused on defeating Donald Trump.

“When we’re talking about president of the United States, in my own personal view, this is not the time for a protest vote. This is [the] time to elect Hillary Clinton and then work after the election to mobilize millions of people to make sure she can be the most progressive president she can be,” said Sanders.

Some African Americans were angry and insulted when Trump, in a pitch to black voters, made a carte blanche statement that “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”

The statement only reveals that Trump does not know what goes on in the black community, his words are only assumptions. Of course many words that come out of his mouth are factually inaccurate. I beg to differ. All African Americans do not live in poverty as with any other ethnic group, and all do not attend “no good” schools, as he suggested. And certainly the unemployment rate is not 58 percent.

Trump has declined to attend African American gatherings, but just recently attended a black church in Detroit. But a few days ago he declined to attend the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation gala, although he was invited.

It’s time to get serious about what is best for us as a people. Make sure you go to the polls on November 8th and vote in our best interest. By doing so, we will be giving homage to our forefathers who in some cases lost their lives in their struggle to get equal voting rights for Blacks in this country.

Juanita Bratcher is an Award-Winning Journalist, the Publisher of www.copylinemagazine.com and the author of several books, songwriter and poet. She has been a Journalist for 40 years covering politics, education and a wide-range of other topics.

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Welcome to CopyLine Magazine! The first issue of CopyLine Magazine was published in November, 1990, by Editor & Publisher Juanita Bratcher. CopyLine’s main focus is on the political arena – to inform our readers and analyze many of the pressing issues of the day - controversial or otherwise. Our objectives are clear – to keep you abreast of political happenings and maneuvering in the political arena, by reporting and providing provocative commentaries on various issues. For more about CopyLine Magazine, CopyLine Blog, and CopyLine Television/Video, please visit juanitabratcher.com, copylinemagazine.com, and oneononetelevision.com. Bratcher has been a News/Reporter, Author, Publisher, and Journalist for 33 years. She is the author of six books, including “Harold: The Making of a Big City Mayor” (Harold Washington), Chicago’s first African-American mayor; and “Beyond the Boardroom: Empowering a New Generation of Leaders,” about John Herman Stroger, Jr., the first African-American elected President of the Cook County Board. Bratcher is also a Poet/Songwriter, with 17 records – produced by HillTop Records of Hollywood, California. Juanita Bratcher Publisher